dark where the shadows run
by obeetaybee
Summary: Sitting in the middle of the white room, she can hear it seeping through the walls, the vibrations echoing all around her as the colors swirl and darkness looms. A Supernatural Silent Hill crossover fic.


**dark where the shadows run **

_Strange, how easily she grows accustomed to the screaming. _

_Sitting in the middle of the white room, she can hear it seeping through the walls, the vibrations echoing all around her as the colors swirl and darkness looms. She pulls her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and rocks back and forth, feeling them, their pain, their madness. _

_His voice is louder than the others, and her hands shake as she clasps them to her ears. She wants it to stop, prays it'll stop, but she can still hear their screams. The smell of brimstone and ash clings to the back of her throat. She's afraid to close her eyes, afraid of what will come whispering in the dark. _

_Finally, it becomes too much and her own raw scream rips from her throat. She collapses backwards, landing on the large sheets of paper surrounding her, the crinkling noise loud under her state-issued pajamas. Crayons and markers lay scattered about the room, colors she doesn't need bleeding onto the white cushioned floor. _

_Manic now, the only colors she wants are red, orange and black. The colors of fire and ashes._

_Oblivion comes quickly in the form of a little red pill and a needle to her vein. Her rocking intensifies until she hears the screaming no more and when she climbs to her knees, she'll have no recollection of her hands seeking papers, each one uncovering a horror worse then the last. _

_Black for the mist she draws swirling over and over again like a tornado over the wide open mouth. Red for the blood seeping though the walls, pooling on the cold concrete floor. Orange for the fire licking up her brother's legs, his guttural screams as it engulfs his entire body_.

"Where's my coffee?" Dean asked through the open car window as Sam walked out of the store loaded with traveling food.

Sam gave him an irritated look. "Open the door for me," he said. Dean pursed his lips together in annoyance, but slid out of the car and took one of the bags from Sam before they fell. He peeked into it and smiled as he pulled out a bag of Cheez-Waffies.

"Aw, Sammy. You remembered." He opened the bag and snagged a waffle, chewed for a moment and then grimaced. "These aren't as good as they used to be." Dean threw them back into the bag and wiped his cheesy fingers on the back of his jeans. "I need caffeine. I'll be right back."

Sam was on the phone when Dean came out of the store coffee cup in hand and chewing on the stirrer. He opened the driver's side door and pulled the plastic straw out of his mouth as he shut the door behind him. Sam nodded and wrote something on scrap of paper. "When's the last time you talked to her?"

Dean raised an eyebrow as he took a sip from the cardboard cup, but Sam held up a finger. "Both of them went? Okay, well, we're in the middle of Colorado right now, so it'll take us about two days to get there." He nodded again and wrote some more. He put the pen in his mouth as he opened the glove box and pulled two road maps into his lap. Shutting the box, he put the scrap paper on top of the folded maps.

Dean leaned over to look at the paper, but he never could understand Sam's scrawl. "What's the name of the hospital again?" Sam paused, pen poised over the paper. After a moment, he wrote two words, Southern Maine. "How did you find that out?" Sam asked into the cell phone. "Jesus, Bobby, what made them think they could handle this by themselves, they're not like us…yeah, yeah, Anne knows, but Billy…" Sam broke off and Dean's jaw tightened as his brother looked over at him.

"Look Bobby, we're heading east now and we'll call you in a couple of hours," Sam paused and nodded his head. "Yeah, email me what you have, the police report if you can get your hands on it. Also, send us what information you have on the cult. How the hell did she find out they were the ones…?" Sam broke off and listened for a few minutes. "Yeah, yeah, Bobby. I know. I remember how she is. What about Billy? Nothing? Fuck. Okay. Well, send us what you've got, and I'll go though it when we stop."

Sam said goodbye and hit the disconnect button on his phone. He was quiet until Dean couldn't take it anymore. He slapped Sam on the shoulder and said, "What's going on with Anne?"

"She's in trouble. Bobby said she'd been doing some research on her mother's murder, and about two weeks ago she headed back to her home town."

"You said, 'hospital', is she hurt?" Dean asked as he cranked the ignition.

"She's been committed, Dean."

"What?"

"From what the police released to Bobby, she was found wandering near Ashfield, really cut up and bloody. They brought her to the hospital, but she freaked and started tearing up the room."

"Really?" Dean asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Somehow can't see her doing that."

"Come on, Dean. You were both twelve. I think it's time to get over it," Sam said, not waiting for Dean's reply before continuing.. "Anyway, they sedated her, but every time she came out from under she'd just freak out again. She refuses to speak to the police or her doctors about what happened. The police want to charge her with trespassing and possibly murder."

Dean's hands tightened on the wheel of the Impala. "She's crazy, Sam, I'll admit that, but she ain't no killer."

"I know, but Dean, she's not talking at all. She was found outside of a town she's a stranger in, and she won't say what happened to her, what happened to Billy, and the cops are drawing their own conclusions."

"Billy's with her? How could she have brought him there? Billy's just a kid!"

Sam dropped his eyes to the brown paper in front of him. "He's not a kid anymore, Dean. He's twenty. If Anne thought she found the cult she suspected was involved with her mother's murder, you know she would've wanted revenge. Maybe Billy wanted to be involved too."

"You remember, right? The day Bobby was talking to Dad about those kids? Bobby said he thought something supernatural happened to their mother."

"I remember," Sam said. "Bobby said she'd been contacted by someone who once lived in the town. He didn't say anything to her. She found out on her own."

"Found out what?" Dean looked over at his brother.

Sam tapped his knee with the pen in his hand. "Three weeks ago, Anne came to Bobby, upset. She got something in the mail from someone named," Sam looks down at his paper for a moment. "Abigail Quincy, saying she had information about Anne's mother's murder, but refused to give it over the phone or in a letter."

Stretching his arm over the back seat, Sam grabbed a bottle of water from the plastic sack. He cracked the seal on the rim and took a long drink before continuing.

"So anyway, Bobby said he managed to convince her to wait, let them do some research, but about two weeks ago, she and Billy packed some stuff and went back east. Bobby was worried, made her promise to stay in touch. He called her every day for over a week, and things were fine. Then she stopped answering her phone, and two days later he called in a missing persons report with the Ashfield police department."

The brothers were quiet for a moment, the sound of the tires rubbing on the pavement filling the car. Sam looked out the window, watching the scenery flying by. "She seemed like she was doing so well when I saw her last year."

"She was in California?"

"Yeah, on campus last fall. Me and you, we hadn't talked in months. She asked that unless it came up not tell you guys I saw her."

"Why?" Dean asked, perplexed. "Why does it matter if I know you saw her or not?"

Sam folded the paper in his lap in half and tucked the pen behind his ear. "Don't know. She just asked me not to tell you and Dad I saw her."

"Huh," Dean said. He was quiet for a moment, and then his curiosity got the better of him. "How'd she look?"

"She looked okay; I mean, her hair was longer than I ever remember seeing it. I don't know, she looked…tired and thin. She said Billy had her crossing the country on a campus tour. He was thinking of attending Stanford."

"Did she say if she was seeing anyone?"

Sam shook his head, not doing a good job of hiding the slight smile playing around his mouth. "No. She seemed pretty devoted to Billy."

"What about Billy? How'd he look?"

Sam smiled widely. "He's huge. He's so tall now, Dean. I couldn't believe how grown up he is. You could tell how proud of him she was, the fact he was accepted into Stanford and actually had the choice to attend there or not. He asked about you. Said he missed you. You remember how much he hero-worshiped you." Sam looked down at his hands and then over at his brother. "I mean, after the initial..."

Dean put his hand up. "I remember, Sam. No need to dredge up ancient history." Dean put his hand back on the wheel. "When did you and Anne talk?"

"She and I found a minute to sit down and have a cup of coffee while Billy attended an undergraduate seminar. She asked after you and Dad, and seemed upset when I told her the three of us hadn't talked in awhile. She seemed especially concerned about you and Dad."

"Really? Huh." Dean furrowed his brow for a moment and then shook his head. "That's odd, right? But then, Anne's always been odd, you know in an 'I'm hot, but crazy' sort of way."

Sam laughed. "You didn't. Dean, tell me you didn't."

Dean smiled. "Nah, I didn't. I tried though."

"You would," Sam said as he glanced back out the window. "Only you would." Sam shrugged his shoulders. "Anyway, I got the impression she kept in touch with you guys."

Dean shook his head as he put his foot on the brake. He looked both ways before turning left onto the interstate. "Nah, I haven't seen her in five or six years. Not since Bobby's sister died and her and Billy moved in with Bobby."

At daybreak, when the sun rose over the road, the caffeine flowing through his veins began to fail Dean. He hit Sam in the chest with his hand to wake him as he pulled into the first roadside motel he found. Fifteen minutes later, Dean lay on his side, arm under his head, listening to his brother's fingers tapping on his laptop. The rattle of the keyboard was soothing, like listening to his father wiping down his firearms. On the edge of sleep, he replayed in his head the conversation with Sammy earlier, about being twelve, and Dean remembered the first time he had seen Anne Mason.

_She had been nothing but a blur at first, coming at him like a linebacker for the tackle. _

_Dad had dumped them at Bobby's once again with no explanation and twelve year old Dean had been furious at being left behind while his father hunted. He stood outside the back door hurling rocks at the trees. Dean hadn't been paying attention, reveling in the satisfaction of the deep whack of the rocks knocking into the trees. He bent to pick up another, threw that one, and only then saw the kid dart across the back yard at the same time the rock left his fingers. It smacked the boy dead center in the forehead and knocked him flat on his back. _

_Dean stared, horrified, and then ran to help the boy. He was run over first. _

_She attacked Dean with her body, and then when he was flat on his back, with her fists. She bloodied his nose and blackened his eye before Bobby and Sam came running out the backdoor, Billy screaming in the background. She was still kicking at Dean when Bobby hauled her off of him. _

"_Asshole!" She screamed, as Bobby held her back. "You wanna knock someone around? Try me first!" _

_A heavy set woman with a red face Dean had never seen before came rushing out the backdoor and gathered the little boy in her arms. She tried to offer comfort by patting the little boy on his back, but he was having none of it. He squirmed and twisted in her arms until the woman had to put him down on the ground or drop him._

_The little girl shrugged Bobby's hands off and stood defiantly over Dean, her small hands clenched in fists. _

"_I'm so sorry, Bobby, I didn't know. I don't think she meant to really hurt him." The woman stood behind them, apologizing over and over to Bobby, but he just waved his hands at her._

"_Hush, Stella," Bobby said._

_Dean waved off Sam's hand and stood up slowly. He wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand. What the hell? Usually, girls loved him. "I didn't do it on purpose! You didn't have to go all Wild Bunch on me!" _

"_I saw you throw the rock," Anne had yelled at him. "He was smaller than you and you thought you'd use him for target practice. You're gross and disgusting." She gave him one last withering look and then turned to her still crying brother. "Come on, Boo," she whispered and picked the little boy up, enveloping him with her arms. The boy tucked his face into her neck, his sobs quiet against her skin._

_A new sensation rushed through Dean. Even though he knew he had done nothing wrong, remorse, embarrassment and shame all wrapped up in molten lead congealed in his belly. He stared straight ahead, careful not to look at Sam standing beside him. "This isn't fair! I didn't…" _

"_Shush, Dean," Bobby said, his voice low. _

_The little girl turned to Bobby and said, "I'm sorry for any trouble, Mr. Singer." Solemnly, she faced the woman and then said with great formality, "We're ready for you to show us our new home now, Miss Singer." Without looking back at Dean, the little girl walked around the house, still clutching the little boy to her chest. _

"_Bobby, I'm so sorry. I had no idea she would…" _

"_Not her fault, Stella," Bobby said as he stared hard at Dean. "She was only doing what she knows. Protecting her brother." _

_Dean's face went hot. _

"_Take the kids home, let Mom fuss over them and get them settled. You can bring them back another day." /i _

When this dick of a kid's not here_, were the unspoken words Dean heard. _

_That afternoon, Bobby had found Dean sulking on the back porch. When Dean explained what happened, Bobby put his hand on his shoulder. "That girl, and that boy, they're damaged, Dean. The lady from the county, she told my sister their father took off when Billy was a baby. Their mother was killed about six years ago. And nobody knows what happened, still. All those two've had for a long time is each other, and bad foster homes. They've never been given any reason to trust anyone." _

_Later that night, just as Dean was about to drift off to sleep, Sammy whispered, "I know you couldn't have hit that little boy on purpose, Dean." _

_"And how do you know that?" _

_Sam sighed and nestled deeper into his pillows and blankets before answering. "Because you've never hit me." /i _

"Dean?"

"Dude! What the…?" Sam stood over him, big hand on his shoulder, already dressed for the day even though the room was still dark.

"It's time to go. Bobby called about ten minutes ago. We need to get to there before tomorrow, or any chance we have of getting Anne may be gone."

"Why?" Dean asks as he ran his hands over his face.

Sam sat on the other bed and started gathering up the loose papers from the coverlet. "She's being transferred tomorrow afternoon to a private facility called Leavendusk. On the orders of a Doctor Kaufman. Bobby was doing some digging and said this doctor is connected to the cult and if Anne gets under his control, it'll be almost impossible to get her back out."

"Dude, this is never going to work," Sam said as he scratched under the collar of his blue button down shirt.

Dean pulled on the dark blue jacket with the words 'Medical Transport' embroidered on the back. "How many times do I have to tell you Sam, it's all in the attitude." He rifled through the stack of identification badges on the front seat of the Impala and threw one at Sam. "Clip it on your shirt."

"We have no ambulance, Dean."

"Don't need one," Dean said as he shut the car door and walked around the car to stand by Sam. He looked up at his brother and said, "Once we get her off the psych floor, we're basically home free. We ditch the gurney, prop her up in a wheel chair, lose these crap jackets and we roll her out to the Impala. Nobody's going to stop us. We'll just be two more yuppie boys in Dockers taking home little sister. Nobody's gonna care. They all have their own dramas to worry about. Put your jacket on."

Sam pulled on his navy blue jacket and zipped it up halfway as they circled the hospital corner towards the ambulance bay. "Where we going to get all this medical equipment to help us in this great escape plan of yours, huh, Dean?"

"My God, can these pants be anymore uncomfortable?" Dean bitched as the sliding glass doors silently whooshed open. He stopped just inside the doors, turned to Sam with a wide smile and opened up his arms as if to say, 'ta-da!' All along the hospital corridor, empty wheelchairs, beds and gurneys stood abandoned. "Come on, should I say it? I think I should say it," Dean teased as he snagged the first empty gurney and wrapped his fingers around the steel bar on the front.

"Don't say it."

"I have to. It's my inevitable right as the big brother. I told you so."

Down another hallway and past a nurses station and Dean lifted a clipboard without the desk nurse noticing. "Sorry," he said as he looked down at the chart. "Alfred. They'll find your paperwork right here." He left the pink and yellow papers down on an empty hospital bed in the hallway.

They passed a waist high blue laundry tub, overflowing with towels and white sheets. "Grab some of those sheets," Dean said over his shoulder, grinned as Sam looked both ways before grabbing a stack.

They stopped at the elevator, and Dean nodded and smiled at the passing nurses and doctors. They might have been invisible for all the notice they were paid. "What floor?"

"Eight," Sam said as he buttoned the top button of his shirt. He put his finger under the collar and pulled it away from his skin. The elevator dinged and the door slid aside.

Dean pushed the floor button and smiled at the nurse who walked up to the open doors. "Sorry, full," he said as the door slid closed. "Hurry up, Sam. Help me make this thing up."

When the elevator doors opened on the eighth floor and the wheels hit the hallway, they were confronted with a bored looking guard behind a desk in front of a locked metal door.

"Hey," Dean said, looking down at the guard. "We're here to pick up an Anne Mason. Transport to Leavendusk Psychiatric Hospital?"

The guard thumbed through his papers. "You're early."

Dean smiled. "Yeah. Sorry about that. One of our other transports cancelled and the boss sent us here."

The guard picked up the telephone on his desk and hit one button to dial. "Pick up for Mason is here, he announced into the receiver. He looked up at Dean while the other person spoke, raised his hand and beckoned Dean forward. "Let me see your ID," he said.

Dean handed it over and looked away as the man scrutinized it and wrote down the ID information on the clip board in front of him. Hanging up the phone, he handed the ID back and turned to the computer at the edge of the desk. "It'll be a few minutes. They weren't expecting you, so they have to sedate the patient for travel."

Dean smiled and put his hands in his pockets. "That bad, huh? I swear, sometimes we should be paid combat pay."

Sam tapped the edge of gurney into the small of Dean's back as the guard looked up, scowling at them. "They're people too. Treat them with respect. Understood?"

Dean looked back at Sam who was giving him a pissy look. "I understand," Dean tried very hard to look contrite. "Sir."

The apology seemed to console the guard. Sam moved over to the windows and stared down at the parking lot below. Dean pursed his lips to one side, then the other as he rocked back and forth on his toes. He hated waiting.

Ten minutes later, the telephone rang. The guard picked it up and spoke, his voice low. As he replaced the receiver he said, "All right, she's ready. You can go in now." He pushed a red button on the panel next to his computer and the door buzzed. Dean hurried forward to catch it and opened it.

The hallways of the psych ward were different from the ones below. Instead of pretty curtains and flowery wall borders, this floor had shatter-proof glass and solid steel doors. It also had dazed patients in pajamas and robes milling around, talking to inanimate objects or staring off into space.

"Creepy," Dean muttered over his shoulder and Sam nodded his head in agreement.

They stopped at the nurses' station and knocked on the glass sliding window. "Hey," Dean said to the pretty but frazzled looking nurse who opened the window without looking at them. "We're here for Anne Mason?" She nodded and picked up the metal chart on the shelf by her hand.

"Are you guys new? I thought Denny and Steven were on for transports to Leavendusk," she said as she flipped through the paperwork.

"We're on stand-by. One of their kids got sick and you know, we're filling in."

The nurse nodded absent-mindedly and finally looked up at them to hand them Anne's paperwork. The look on her face when she saw Dean was priceless and Dean smiled back, and hoped Sam's not rolling his eyes too hard. The smile on her face widened, her other hand going to her hair to fluff up her mid-90's Julia Roberts hair-do. "It's crazy here today," she said, as she looked at Dean and fluttered her eyelashes at him. Dean resisted the urge to turn at soft snort behind him. "No pun intended."

"Well," Dean said as he took the paperwork from her. "It's a good pun actually."

From somewhere down the hall came the sound of a wailing scream and Dean's smile slid from his face as the sound was abruptly cut off. He was ready to leave. He signed the paperwork with a flourish and handed it back to the nurse. "Do you have your paperwork for me, James…Hammett?"

Dean's smile froze on his face. He glanced down at her chest, relieved to see a name tag. "Ah, Kelly. See, I knew you were going to ask for that. I knew it as soon as we were let in, and I remembered I left it in the truck." An easy grin slid back over his face. "What if you let me take the patient down, load her into the ambulance and then I'll come back with the paperwork." He leaned forward, arm on the windowsill, praying his charm would get him out of this one.

"We're not supposed to do that," the nurse said, a frown playing around her mouth.

"I know, I know," Dean said, putting up both of his hands. "I'm sorry about this, but we got a kid, this three year old we need to pick up after this drop off. He broke his leg and can't fit into a car seat. He's got an appointment for an x-ray," Dean paused and looked at the clock over his head. "In two hours. If we're late, we're so fired. And if I get fired, I won't be able to come back and see you anymore."

"Really?" The nurse said, her cheeks reddening under Dean's attention. She glanced back at the other nurse working on the computer behind her. "Do you promise to come right back?"

Dean's smile widened. "Of course. I'll come back up while my partner here secures the patient in the ambulance. Then, maybe we can have a moment to you know, talk. You're not married, are you?" Dean asked, ignoring the sigh coming from the peanut gallery.

She shook her pretty red head. "I'm not supposed to do this," she whispered, but Dean could tell she was wavering.

"I'll come right back, I promise."

She sighed and just for a moment, a flash of guilt dashed down Dean's spine. But as soon as he felt it, he shook it off. He smiled back down at her.

Kelly the nurse sighed. "Alright. Let me call Marty. He'll help you."

Marty was a great hulking mass of a man in blue scrubs. "You the two here for Anne?"

Dean and Sam nodded. "Follow me."

Anne was unconscious on the floor of the padded room when Marty opened the heavy steel door. She was curled on her side, her hands hidden under her chin. A deep blue and green bruise colored half her face. Half-healed scratches ran along her jaw and neck and her skin had an unnatural pallor, almost gray under the unforgiving fluorescent lighting.

"I have to tell you, I'm glad to see her going somewhere else. She needs a lot more help then what the doctors here can give her. Let Dr. Kaufman know she'll probably be out of it for at least eight to ten hours."

Without waiting for an answer from Sam and Dean, he bent and picked her up in his arms lifted her, his bulky arms barely flexing. He laid her down on the gurney and tucked the sheet around her.

Dean stared down at Anne, his lips pursed. She looked like crap. What the hell had she gotten herself into?

"She's not doing well here?" Sam asked as he helped Marty do the straps to lock her onto the gurney.

Marty shook his head and when she was all secure, he pushed the gurney down the hall a bit and opened a locker. "Here's everything she came in with, including her bag from the police," he said as he put it on the end of the cart. He reached back into the locker and pulled out a sheaf of white paper rolled into a tube and secured with a rubber band. "Make sure Dr. Kaufmann sees these. I don't know what's going on in her head, but all I can tell you, its some seriously messed up stuff."

"Remember; remember the second of November..."

_"Shh," she says as the ash falls from the sky, the lyrical sweeping prose of the poem loud in her ears. Not the second, the fifth, why the second? "Can you hear?"_

"_I can," he calls and his voice is sweet music to her ears. She grabs his hand, and they run through the empty streets, until he stops and pulls his hands from hers. "I can hear her!" He kneels and grabs a handful of gray dust, throwing into the air above his head. "She's close, she's coming. Annie! Momma's coming!" _

_She's distracted by the red ribbon tying her hair back, one end trailing over her shoulder. The string is bleeding. Her pretty white dress is ruined. The stain spreads slowly, crimson blossoming over her heart and down her breasts. "No, no," she says, shaking her head, pulling her hands away from the bloody dress. Horror overcomes her as she pulls the skirt away from her chest, needing, wanting, having to get it away from her skin. _

_And still Billy dances. _

_She looks up at him, opening her mouth to ask for help and then she notices the black smear creeping out of his mouth, bruising the skin around his lips. _

_He twirls in the deluge, his hair lighting with tiny pinpricks of light. They catch and grow, engulfing him in an orange glow. His laughter turns to screams as she murmurs over and over,_ /i "Remember, remember..."

Consciousness came abruptly as she fought through the cobwebs of nightmare-filled sleep. A short, anguished moan escaped her lips as she battled against the blankets holding her down.

"Hey, hey, it's okay. Anne, you're safe. It's me, Sam," the voice came from above her and to the right and she clung to it. She pulled her hair from her eyes as she fell back against the pillows.

"What are you doing here?" She rasped, her voice rusty from misuse.

Sam sat on the side of the bed and helped her sit up before handing her a glass of water. "Bobby called; he was in the middle of a hunt and asked if we'd help out."

"We?" She rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth. "Who's with you? John?"

"No, Dean. I don't…we don't know where Dad is."

Her head was pounding. "Where am I?"

"We're in a motel just outside of Syracuse."

Anne struggled upright again, tried to sip at the water, and pain exploded behind her eyes. She dropped the glass into her lap, and clasped both of her palms to her eyes. Water spilt everywhere. "How long? How long since I left?" She dropped her hands into her lap.

"About eight hours, Anne, what's the matter?" Sam said, jumping up as the water traveled along the quilt towards his jean covered leg. Her hands began to shake as everything she'd tried to block flooded back into her brain. Pushing back the covers, she tried to stand and collapsed against the bed. She would have fallen to the floor if Sam hadn't caught her arms.

"Oh God, Sam. We need to go back. You don't understand," she tried to take a deep breath as panic threatened to overtake her.

Sam still held her arm and stared down at her. "No, Anne. You need to rest. Those drugs you were given to keep you sedated are still in your bloodstream. You're going to be having some serious withdraw symptoms."

Anne stared down at the floor until her eyes blurred and the patterns began to resemble blood splatters. "How far?"

"What?"

"How far are we from Silent Hill?"

"I don't know where Silent Hill is." Sam said, letting go of her arm.

Slowly, she sat back down on the bed as her vision began to darken around the edges. Her hands shook. "We can't stay here, Sam."

"What's going on, Anne? Where's Billy?"

She chose to ignore his question. How could she answer his question and not go mad? "They'll find me. If they haven't already. She'll find me."

"Who, Anne? Who'll find you? Where's Billy?" Sam knelt before Anne as she started to cry.

Swallowing the sob that rose in her throat, she looked at him and blurted, "I think he's dead."

What she left unsaid is, "_I think I killed him_." /i

The look that came over his face was every thought she'd had since it happened. A rush of intense sickness and desolation swept over her as she tried to stand again. Falling to her knees, Anne dry-heaved once, twice, three times over the carpet, her empty stomach spasming and she wrapped her arm around it. Her forehead fell to the floor and she began to cry, yielding to the compulsive sobs shaking her body. Sam rubbed her back, murmuring nonsense words, trying to soothe her pain.

A few minutes later, she sat up and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and gave Sam a tremulous smile. "I'm okay, I think. Let me just sit here for a minute. Maybe I can try to drink some more water?"

Sam nodded and silently picked up the empty glass from the bed and walked to the bathroom, filling it with tap water before kneeling back down beside her. She drank silently and deeply.

"Hey, hey," Sam said, reaching for the glass. "Take it easy. If you drink too much, you'll make yourself throw up.

She took a deep breath and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth as she handed the almost empty glass back to Sam. He took it from her with a slight smile and put a hand on her shoulder, before brushing a lock of her hair away from her face.

The motel room door jiggled as the sound of a key being fitted to a lock filled the room. Pale sunlight slid over them as the figure in the doorway stood silhouetted against the setting sun.

"Well, now. This looks awkward," Dean said as he closed the door behind him.

Sam shook his head and rolled his eyes at his brother. "Shut up, Dean."

Dean clenched his jaw as he put the bag of groceries down on the table. "She woke up? Is she talking about what happened to her yet?"

"I'm awake," Anne said thickly as she tried to stand. "Alive? Not sure yet." She crawled back into the bed. Her body shivered violently teeth chattering in the quiet room as she stretched out on the dry side of the bed. "The room is spinning."

"Here," Sam said, holding out the glass of water. "Drink some more water, but drink it slowly. You're probably suffering from dehydration."

Anne rolled over onto her side and glanced at the glass. The water already in her stomach lurched and gurgled. "I don't think I can," she said as she curled into a ball and pushed her face into the pillow. Mumbling into the pillow cover, she said, "I think I'm going to be sick again."

Dean grabbed the wastepaper basket and held it as far away from himself as he could and still get it under her mouth as she retched and brought up the water. "Gross," he mumbled.

Snot and tears ran down her face as her stomach continued to empty. Sam handed her a wash cloth when she pushed away the basket. She silently wiped her face and mouth before falling back against the pillow. Darkness blurred her vision until once again; she was alone in the ash covered streets.

She woke hours later, and by the heavy silence, knew it was the middle of the night. "Dean?" she whispered into the dark.

"I'm here," he said, and one of the many shadows in the corner stood and sat beside her on the bed. He gently pushed the hair from her face.

"I'm in a bad way."

"Yeah, you are," he said, his fingers playing with one of the two braids the nurses plaited in her hair. "But we'll find Billy, okay?"

She drew a long, shuddery breath. "You shouldn't have come," she said and knew he opened his mouth to protest. She closed her eyes before he could answer and the darkness claimed her once more.

A siren wailed in the distance, jolting her awake with a sharp scream. "It's coming!"

"Anne, are you okay?" Sam was at her side as she wrestled with the blankets and jumped from the bed.

"We've got to hide, it's coming!"

"Son of a bitch!" Dean yelled, jumping up and causing his chair to fall backwards. He came up with a gun in his hand, and leveled it at Anne. Sam shoved Dean back, grabbed Anne's arm and shook it. "Anne! You're fine! You were dreaming, it's okay. It's okay!"

Anne stared at the two of them for a moment before looking out the motel room window. They were right. No darkness, no crawlies. No monsters.

"Better now?" Sam asked.

She nodded her head as Dean righted the chair and shook his head. "Jesus Christ, Anne," he said as emptied his pockets of change and put his cell phone and gun down on the night stand table. He stretched out over the bed and threw his arm over his eyes. "Do you think you can manage to keep yourself awake for an hour? One hour. That's all I'm asking for. I need to freaking sleep, okay? No more bad dreams, no more screaming? Understood?"

Anne held her head in her hands and nodded. Within minutes, Dean's breathing rhythm changed and deepened.

"Hey," Sam said, his voice hushed. "How you feeling?"

"Don't know yet," she whispered back, her tongue thick and fuzzy. "I'm sorry," she said as she pointed a finger at Dean.

"I know. He took the late watch last night. He stayed awake long enough for me to get up, but while I was in the bathroom, he conked out in the chair. I should have warned you he's a bitch if you wake him right after he falls asleep."

"You didn't know I was going to wake up screaming."

Sam sat on the edge of the bed. "Yeah, about that. What was coming?"

Anne tried to smile and had a feeling it looked more like a grimace. "Nothing, bad dream, I guess," she said as she looked up at the spackled ceiling. "Today, Sam," she said as she slowly sat up in bed. Using her hands, she pushed herself to the edge of the bed. "I have to go back today."

"Okay," he said as he stood, unfolding his long body from the bed.

She was sweaty; her shirt was stuck to her chest and the small of her back. A grimy odor wafted towards her nose and with disgust, she realized it was her. She couldn't decide if she was grateful they hadn't tried to change her clothes or disgusted she was still wearing her mental ward greens. "I need a shower," she said, waving away Sam's hand as she slowly stood. "I can do it."

Despite her brave words, dizziness blurred her vision momentarily. When it passed, she asked, "You wouldn't happen to have my bag, would you?"

"We do. The police impounded your truck and brought the bag to the hospital. It's in the trunk. Let me see if I can get out of this room without waking Sleeping Beauty and I'll go grab it."

Anne nodded and instantly regretted it as her vision blurred again and her stomach leapt. "Okay, not quite ready for sudden head movements yet. Wait, how did you guys get me out?"

Sam grinned. "Masters of disguise are we. No, seriously, we posed as the EMT drivers who were scheduled to pick you up and transport you to Leavendusk. We arrived about hour before the normal pick up and Dean charmed them into letting you go early."

"Thank you," she said, sitting back down on the edge of the bed. Sam nodded and stepped out of the motel room.

Her entire body ached and she still wasn't sure death would be better alternative to how she felt, but she couldn't help but let go of a soft sigh as she watched Dean sleep. He rolled over onto his side facing her, his arm tucked under the pillow and snored. His eyelashes lay like shadows against his cheek, and Anne resisted the urge to run her fingertip over them. He always was too damn pretty for his own good.

But her smile faded as she thought of Billy. She wished she could believe they'd help her get Billy out, wished she could believe Billy was still alive. Now, she had to figure out how the hell to get rid of them so she could finish this on her own.

She glanced at the bedside table and Dean's cell phone. Anne frowned and picked it up, flipping through the recent calls until she found his father.

_Dean dreams and as so often happens when he sleeps, memories invade._

_He was nineteen the night he parked the Impala outside the Singer house, watching the darkened windows and feeling the hunt tension increase. Bobby had called John about a nasty pack of Death Wings and Kratichs that were ravaging the county's livestock. It wasn't far from Bobby's town and even though Dean could have just called, conversation and a beer or six would help him unwind._

_Too bad his father didn't share the same sentiment._

_He blinked against the sudden brightness of the porch light, smiling at her as she peeked around the curtains and his night just got a little bit brighter. He'd forgotten Anne and Billy were living here now. She answered the door covering a yawn with one hand, one side of her short hair flat against her head and crisscrossing red marks from her pillow running across her face. "Dean?" _

"_This must be where the angels keep themselves at night," he said with a smile, wincing as the fresh stitches pulled across his temple. She was wearing an old ratty USMC t-shirt tied in a knot at the small of her back. Dean was almost positive it had once belonged to his father. _

_She pushed open the screen door with one hand and stared into the darkness behind him. "Are you alone?"_

"_Yeah," he said and some emotion Dean didn't recognize flashed across her face. "Man, Anne. I haven't seen you in years. How you doing?"_

"_I'm okay, considering. Jesus, Dean. You're hurt," she said as she motioned him inside with a wave of her arm. "Sit down," she said as she turned on the lamp and moved newspapers off the couch. "God, Dean. You're a mess." _

"_Thanks," he said, grimacing as he sat down. "Nice to see you, too."_

"_Bobby's asleep. Do you want me to wake him up?"_

"_No. I just wanted to be sure everything was okay here. I forgot you and Billy were staying here now. And I wouldn't say no to a place to crash for the night if I could."_

"_Yeah, we've been here ever since Stella died."_

_Dean shook his head. "Crap, I totally forgot about Stella. Car accident, right? I'm sorry for your loss."_

_Anne pursed her lips to the side for a moment. "Yeah, me too. It was so sudden and Billy's still upset about it."_

"_How's Bobby doing?"_

_Anne smiled. "He's being Bobby, of course. Strong and silent, you know how he is. Do you want a beer?" _

"_Oh, hell yeah." Dean said, his appreciation for her growing. _

_She walked to the kitchen and Dean tilted his head, watching the line of her ass in her faded flannel pants._

_She twisted the cap off as came back into the room, handing the bottle to him with a smile before tossing the cap on the coffee table. He drank deeply, sighing as the cold alcohol slid down his throat and hit his belly._

_She settled beside him, her fingers reaching to touch the cut on his temple. "You know you're always welcome here. What were you guys up against tonight?" _

"_Those lovely Death Wings and their nasty counterparts, Kratichs." _

"_Yuck," she said. "Bobby's been following their path of destruction for the past couple of weeks. He said he was going to give you guys a call. I thought you'd stop here before clearing out their nest."_

"_Didn't need to," Dean said, hissing in pain as he shifted on the couch. He took another long pull of the beer. "Dad knew what to do. Fling burning oil on the creepers on the ground and then blast the other fuckers out of the air when they swoop in for the kill. Easy as pie."_

"_Yeah, blood pie, maybe." Anne said as her mouth twisted into an ironic grin. "Did your father stitch you up?" _

_Dean nodded as he slouched lower onto the couch. "How can you tell?" _

"_He left the blood stains. Where's John now?" /i _

John_ flashed through Dean's mind. He'd never heard her call his dad anything other than Mr. Winchester before._ _Not your dad_, _just /i _ John. _She was being awfully casual with the old man's name_._ "He left, said he had some business to take care of in Kansas City." _

"_And Sam?" _

"_With Pastor Jim. Kid's got mid-terms this week. Dad let him stay behind." Her fingers trailed lightly down his face, her eyebrows furrowed in concern, taking stock of all his cuts. _

"_Nice hair," he said, trying to cover his sudden breathlessness. _

"_What?" She asked, before clasping her hand to her bed head. "I wasn't expecting company at three am, Dean." She tried to smooth the short pieces down, but failed. _

_His skin felt cool where the heat of her fingers touched. _

"_I'm going to check on Billy and get the first aid kit. I'll be right back." _

_Dean waited until she entered the room again before struggling to stand. She had put a brown headband in her hair to hold her bangs away from her face. Christ, she looked like she was fourteen years old. Was he seriously thinking about doing what he was thinking? One warm body is just as good as another after a hunt. He could find someone else. "You know, I can probably find my way to a motel okay. I should go, it's late." _

_Anne stopped, held up her hand and said, "Wait." /i _

Well, hell_, he thought. _

"_Wait," she said again. "Please let me...don't go, Dean. Stay." _

_Dean tried to smile as he sat back down on the couch. "Good, I'll stay. Because there's a fine line here between where I think I can drive and where I hurt so much I probably belong in the hospital. I think that fucker broke one of my ribs." _

"_Dammit, Dean, you guys should be more careful," she said. _

_Dean grinned. "Yeah, careful. I'll try to remember that next time."_

_She sat down on the other end of the couch and patted her lap. _

"_You looking to cuddle? Cause normally, I'm the one on the bottom." _

_Anne threw him a look. "Put your head in my lap, numb nuts. I want finish what your father started." _

_She stared down at him, cleaning the dried blood from his face and neck with alcohol swabs. He shivered under her touch, partially because of the evaporation of the alcohol but mostly because her hands were warm. He watched her, knowing by the way her brows furrowed together he was making her uncomfortable. She was no beauty queen, her nose was a bit too long, her lips too full, but man, she had beautiful eyes._

_"Do you have a boyfriend, Anne?" _

_Her fingers stilled on his skin. She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Maybe. Why do you ask?" _

_"Aw come, on. You don't have the captain of the football team sniffing around here?"_

_She tensed under him. "What the hell, Dean? You wanna take me to prom or something?"_

_"Something, maybe," he said._

_She stared down at him, and Dean had to admit he'd always been a sucker for big brown eyes. _

_"Maybe," she whispered. _

_When Anne was done, she slowly curled her fingers into his hair and caressed the tendons at the back of his neck. An electrifying shudder ran through him and she froze momentarily, feeling it too. He opened his eyes and stared up at her as a dim flush rose like a fever across her face. She looked down at him, tilting her head to the side as if she were memorizing each feature of his face. _

_Whatever she saw in his eyes caused her breath to hitch and quicken. His skin tingled as her tongue darted out between her lips before biting her lip and looking away. _

_Dean sat up slowly, and reached for the beer on the coffee table and finished what was left in the bottle. "Last chance, Anne. Do you want me to go?" _

_She shook her head, her breath quickening. "No. Don't go. Stay." _

_Dean put the empty bottle down and turned to her, cupping her cheek in his hand. He touched her face softly, his thumb tracing her bottom lip before leaning in and pressing his lips softly against hers. _

_He moved his mouth over hers, taking her head in both hands and cradling the back of her neck with the other. Suddenly, he was ravenous, wanting to taste every inch of her. Her mouth opened beneath his and she tasted of mint. Dean smiled against her lips, realizing she must've quickly rinsed her mouth when she retrieved the first aid kit. _

_Had she known even then she'd be kissing him tonight? Her hands moved to his chest, palms flat against his shirt. _

_And then her hand moved to his shoulder and pushed him away. "Look, Dean. You're hot. You know you are, but I don't think this is a good idea."_

"_It's not a good idea, but it felt good, right?" He leaned forward and kissed her again. He smiled against her lips as she moaned beneath him. Skin caught on fire and burned where ever he touched her. His fingers brushed under the torn collar of the t-shirt, caressing just the edge of the swell of her breast. Without thought, he brought his knees up on the couch and pushed her back against the couch cushions. _

_Blood pounded in his head, leapt from his heart down to his groin and—_

"_Annie!" A boy's voice echoed down the hallway. Dean jumped back, his head swinging towards the bedroom, his hand reaching for a gun that wasn't there._

_Anne put her hand on Dean's arm and pulled herself up. "That's Billy. He's been having nightmares again," she said as she swung her legs off the couch. "This never would have worked anyway, Dean."_

"_Why do you say that?" he asked as he shifted to a sitting position._

_Anne edged closer the edge of the couch. "I don't think I could handle a one night stand with you. You'd leave in the morning and I'd spend the next sixth months constantly thinking about you, wondering where you are, why you haven't called," she ran a hand over her mouth. "Me and obsession...we're like old friends who secretly hate one another. She's quite the bitch and I think I've got enough craziness in my life right now. You understand, right?"_

_Dean smiled, trying not to let his annoyance show as he tried to nonchalantly shift his softening erection. "Ah well, another time maybe."_

_Again, Billy cried her name from his bedroom. She sighed and stood up from the couch. Leaning over, she kissed him, her tongue sweeping into his mouth one last time. "Yeah, maybe._

_He watched her walk to the hallway. She stopped, turned to look at him and said, "You know where the pillows and blankets are. Good-night, Dean."_

_Dean sighed as she disappeared. "Couldn't you have at least gotten me another beer first?" /i _

Anne sat on the closed lid of the toilet wrapped in the warm towel, staring at the wall in the steam filled room. She ran her fingers absently over the bruises and scabs on the inside of her elbows, water dripping from the ends of her hair and down her naked skin. She picked up the old T-shirt from the floor and pulled the shirt over her head slowly, remembering.

_Momma's crying her name and light from Momma's room spills over her Strawberry Shortcake bedcover. "Annie, come," Momma says as she pulls the still sleeping Billy into her arms. From the hallway come the sounds of furniture falling over. "…never supposed to find us… safe," Momma mumbles over and over again._

_Then they're in Momma's room and in the hidey-hole and Billy is crying and Momma says "hush, I'll be back for you soon."_

_But Momma doesn't come back. _

_Hours later, Anne's rubbing the back of her sleeping brother, his nose tucked against her neck. She's crying silently because she heard the screams and thuds outside the closet door. She knows her Momma's dead. _

_The smell of blood hits her as she opens the door to the secret hole hidden behind Momma's closet. Her eyes find the first slash of scarlet thrown against the white walls. Her stomach heaves and her small hands begin to shake. They had come for her. For her and Billy. Like Momma was afraid they would. _

_Momma knew. _

_Her fingers hover over the stain, over the trails of blood pooling on the floor. There is something there, a hole in the middle of the blood and as she moves closer, it closes with a soft pop._

_With a strangled cry, she pulls her hands away and ran back to her brother. /i _

Questions heaped upon questions in her mind as Anne picked at the needle scab on her inner elbow. She looked down and watched as her blood welled up, crested and ran down her arm. On a whim, she swiped her index finger across it and gathered a fingertip full of crimson and dotted it against the wall. She put her finger into her mouth and sucked, the metallic taste of copper bursting on her tongue. Closing her eyes, she brushed her hair back from her face and braided it tightly. She shivered violently as water drizzled down her neck.

She opened her eyes and icicles struck her body like a million needles all at once. A small hole opened in the wall where she had rubbed the blood against the white paint. She reached for her jeans, pulled them on and buttoned them as she studied the small hole. She sat on the edge of the tub, as far away from the wall as she could get in the small room.

So, the hole in the wall in her mother's bedroom closed while she watched. So what closed the hole? Was it the blood? It had to be, the hole here opened with hers. Was it a portal? Would it lead back to Silent Hill? Anne stared at the closed bathroom door, wondering if she could get it large enough for her to crawl through without the boys noticing. If she could get back to Silent Hill this way, she has no need for them anymore and they could leave. They would be safe.

How much blood would it take before it opened up enough for her to crawl through? How much time would she need before it was big enough?

Anne reached for her makeup bag and dug until she found the razor hidden in the bottom of the case.

Dean looked up from the cell phone in his hand when Anne walked out of the bathroom, fiddling with her shirt sleeves. He stood and flipped it shut as she stopped at the edge of the other bed and rooted through her bag. "What are these?" she asked as she pulled up the sheath of rolled paper.

"You drew those," Dean said. Sam closed his laptop and looked over at her.

"I did?" She looked up at them, her brows raised in surprise, her fingers pushing the rubber band up the paper and into her hand.

Dean looked over at his brother and caught his eye. Sam's jaw tightened and he said, "The nurses said you would draw after you were given your medicine. They said they'd never seen anything like it before."

Anne looked from Sam to Dean. "I don't understand."

"They were doping you up on a cocktail of Chlorpromazine and Aripiprazole," Sam said from the corner, standing up from the chair.

"Either one of them should have knocked you out cold. Instead, you entered an altered state or something and you would draw. That." Dean motioned with his head at the drawings in her hands.

"I've seen these before," Anne said as she tilted her head down to look at the angry scenes, her face visibly paling as she dropped each picture onto the coverlet. The blue, green and yellow colors of her bruise were vivid against her white skin. She bit her bottom lip "These buildings, these people. This is Silent Hill." She stopped at one picture and sank onto the bed, the others sliding off the coverlet and onto the floor. Her hands were shaking so much the paper crinkled.

"I don't understand," Sam said as he bent and picked up the drawings. "You talked about a place called Silent Hill yesterday. Where's Silent Hill? Is Silent Hill where they found you - the abandoned town? I thought you and Billy grew up in Ashfield."

"What?" She asked, tearing her eyes from the picture. "We did. At least until…Silent Hill is the name of the town where my mother grew up." She looked back down at the picture.

"It isn't on any of the maps for the area," Dean said, grimacing as he rubbed his palm over his forehead. "What are you looking at?"

She shook her head from side to side. "I can't believe, this isn't…"

"What?" Dean asked as he walked over and looked at the picture over her shoulder. "Holy fuck, Anne. Is this Billy?" He pulled the paper out of her hands. "What the hell is this thing holding Billy by his neck?"

"Give it back to me, Dean." She stood and tried to grab it from his hands. He held it up over his head and deflected her punch to his chest. "Sit back down, Anne and tell us about Silent Hill."

"Dean," Sam said as he put his hand out for the picture. Dean handed it over to him and then looked down at Anne, her tightened fists.

"Anne, this is witch hunt stuff," Sam said as he sat down beside her on the bed. He thumbed through them silently. "You've drawn all these figures being burned at the stake. There hasn't been any witch burnings in the United States in hundreds of years."

"There was one about thirty years ago. It was never made public knowledge." Anne said as she looked over at Sam.

"Are you saying there was a witch burning in Silent Hill? And your mother - was she a part of it?" Sam asked, his voice rising.

"I don't know," Anne said as she stood up, shouldered past Dean to her pack, hefted it and walked to the door. "What I do know is I'd like to leave now," she turned to look at Sam. "Are we ready? Can we go?"

Dean looked at Sam and tilted his head. His expression clearly read, 'let me handle this.'

"Um, a shower," Sam said quickly, and nodded at Dean.

"No!" Anne cried, her arms outstretched towards Sam.

Dean shook his head in anger. "Enough of this bullshit, Anne. Sam's taking a shower and you're going to sit here and tell me about what the hell happened to you in Silent Hill while he does."

Sam handed the pictures back to Anne and she hugged them to her chest. "I'll be real quick and then we'll be gone, okay?"

"Please?" Anne asked and sat back down on the edge of the bed, rubbing her hands over the back of the pictures against her chest as Sam gathered his stuff. Once the bathroom door shut, her booted foot tapped a staccato beat against the carpet. She put her thumb in her mouth and worried her fingernail as the muted sound of the shower started. The sleeve of her shirt slid down and the edge of the white bandage around her wrist showed.

"What's that there?" Dean asked.

Anne looked up at him, her eyes unfocused for a moment. She blinked and dropped her hand into her lap and said, "What?"

Dean sat down beside her and took her hand into his. The pictures fell to the floor. "This," he said, trying to push her sleeve up to get a better look at the bandage.

She pulled her arm away and clasped it to her chest. "Nothing. It's nothing. The razor slipped in the shower and I nicked my wrist."

"Looks bigger than a nick."

Anne sighed. "It's not, Dean. It's just a nick. I put the bandage on it because I didn't feel like sitting there and waiting for the bleeding to stop."

Dean cleared his throat and tried another way. "Look, if you want Sam and me to help you find Billy, you'll need to tell us the truth, okay?"

Anne closed her eyes beside him and as he watched, she straightened her spine and took a deep breath. "I don't want you to help me find him, Dean," she said, her voice hoarse. "I need to do this on my own. I don't know..." she broke off, and pushed the palms of her hands against her eyes. Her sleeves slid down her arms, revealing both of her bandaged wrists.

Dean stood up, grabbed both her hands and pulled them to him. He turned her wrists, his eyes drawn to the large blood stains in the middle of the gauze. "What did you do, Anne?"

"Nothing!" she cried.

Dean shook her a bit. "This isn't nothing," he said as he pulled at the blood stained bandage, not caring if he hurt her or not. "Did you slit your wrists, Anne?"

Anne threw her head back, color rising in her cheeks. "It's not that! Dean, I swear! It isn't that," she tried to pull her wrists from his hands. "Let go of me, you ass!" She kicked at his legs with her feet. "It's the only way I know how to get back."

A crash and yell from the bathroom and both of them jumped in surprise. Anne used the opportunity to pull her wrists from Dean's hands. "What the fuck! Dean! Dean, get in here!"

"What did you do?" Dean yelled at her again before he turned and threw open the bathroom door. Sam stood just inside, towel wrapped around his waist. He pointed at a large hole in the bathroom wall.

"Dean, look at that!"

"Where the fuck did that come from?"

Sam shook his head. "I don't know. I pulled the towel off the rack and there it was."

"I know who does," Dean said, furious now. He turned, expecting to find Anne in arms reach, and thinking about choking her if she was.

She wasn't. She stood at the door, pack on the floor beside her, her hands over her mouth, staring at the door.

The motel room door and windows were covered with heavy, rusted chains crisscrossing over their thresholds, held against the walls with heavy anchors and locked with gold padlocks.

Two quick strides brought Dean halfway across the room. "Now what the fuck is this?"

Anne shook her head, her eyes huge. "It's too soon. I looked away for one minute…this wasn't supposed to happen yet. You two were supposed to be gone by now. Why couldn't you have left when I wanted you to! I was supposed to be alone by now!" She turned to Dean and her eyes glittered with anger.

Dean clenched his jaw as he reached for the door and pulled on the padlock. It was blank, no combination, and no keyhole. He yanked at the chains on the wall, but they wouldn't give. "Oh, fuck this," he snarled , picking up the sawed-off shotgun by the door.

Sam ran out of the bathroom clutching the wet towel at his hip and grabbed Anne's arm, jerking her with him down behind the bed. Dean brought the gun up, sighted and squeezed the trigger. The blast echoed through the room as plaster flew away from the wall. He pumped another round into the chamber, fired again.

When the smoke cleared, the chains remained, undamaged. "You have got to be kidding me!" Dean said and brought the gun up again. This time he sighted on the large plate-glass window. The end of the gun exploded with another loud boom. The glass shattered, but held. Three times Dean shot at the window until he rushed up to it and smashed the butt of the gun against the cracked glass.

It wouldn't break.

Finally, his arms dropped. "We're locked in," he said, and turned his head to look from Sam to Anne as they stood.

Sam dropped her arm. "The hole in the bathroom, it's a tunnel right?" She nodded her head. "You did it? How?"

Anne looked at Dean and then moved away from Sam. "I think it might be a portal of some kind."

"Her wrists are bandaged," Dean said as he came up to her and pulled her arm out. "Says she nicked her wrists while shaving." Ignoring her protests, he pushed up her shirt sleeve on her right arm and grabbed the blood stained bandage. He pulled the bandage away from her wrist and it fell to the floor as she cried out in pain. "Was it the blood, Anne? Blood magic – black magic?"

"Don't you dare judge me, Dean," she said, anger causing her to choke on her words. "My brother is trapped in Hell and I'm the only one who knows, the only one who can help him--"

"You're not the only one, Anne," Sam said. "How did you know about the blood? How did you know it would open a portal?"

Anne looked from Dean to Sam and then bent her head, staring at the floor. "I was seven when my mother was murdered. Billy was three. Somehow, I don't know how, she knew they were coming," Anne ran a hand across her hair. "Somehow she knew they found us."

She sank down on the bed, her shoulders slumped forward, and her elbows rested on her knees. With a jerk, she pulled her pack off the floor so it landed with a thump beside her. Anne went through it as she spoke.

"My mother was born in Silent Hill and from everything I was able to learn, it's a horrible, evil place. All throughout the history of the town, even before the place was settled in the late seventeen-hundreds, strange things happened. I've read it was a Native American holy place, I read it was a burial ground, and…I don't know. All I know is all through out the history of that area there have been mysterious plagues, and lots of death," Anne stopped searching and brought her hands up to her face. She covered her eyes for a moment before sliding her fingers down.

"I remember when I was a kid there was this word that would get stuck in my head for days. I would wander the house and the yard, mumbling it, hating it and it would disappear as mysteriously as it came. I couldn't understand why, you see?" She sighed and it sounded like it hurt.

"_Toluca. Toluca, Toluca, Toluca /i _. And then when I got the letter and I started researching the area around Ashfield, I discovered it was real, there's a body of water named Toluca Lake not far from Ashfield. It was a real place. And there were mentions of it in a lot of Bobby's books.

"There have been numerous disappearances and records upon records of creature sightings, in that area surrounding Toluca Lake. Creatures not of this world. The earliest entries I could find in Bobby's old books were from before the town was even named. A small village settled on the edge of the lake and there had been some kind of…of an _incident /i _. That's what the diaries, the church records, called it – an 'incident', as though they couldn't bring themselves to actually record what happened. But whatever it was, it made the villagers burn one of their own as a witch. From the diaries and journals and from everything I've read of her descendants, not only was she a witch, but she was an Arch Witch."

"So she was extremely powerful," Sam said, clenching his jaw. "Only an Arch Witch could curse the ground on which she was burned."

Pulling a heavy black leather-bound book from the depths of the bag, she threw it across the floor so it landed at Dean's feet. "That's my mother's diary. I found it after--" she broke off. "It begins on my mother's thirteenth birthday, and ends the day of the burning of nine year old Alessa Gillespie. Thirty years ago, they burned a child in Silent Hill."

Dean stared down at the black book, touched it with the toe of his boot before bending to pick it up.

"I started researching the town before Billy and I came east. Everything I was able to learn that wasn't on the internet is in there. You'll find a first person account of the night of Alessa's burning. The bastards tied her to a chair and set her house on fire around her."

Dean put the shotgun down and opened the book. He looked up and caught Sam's eye and then shook his head. "Dude! Go get dressed!" Dean said as he sent it flying into his brother's hands. Dean turned back to Anne as Sam walked by them to the bathroom, already flipping through the pages of the book.

"Anne," Dean said, hunching down in front of her. "What happened the last time you went to Silent Hill? What happened to Billy?"

"You'll think I'm insane," she said, staring down at the carpet.

Dean gently reached for her chin and pushed her head up. "You opened up a portal tunnel in the bathroom by using your blood. I think we're beyond the 'I think you're insane' part of our relationship."

She smiled faintly and then patted the bed beside her. When Dean sat down, she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them and waited until Sam came back out of the bathroom before she began to speak.

"When that letter about my mother came, I wanted to leave right then. If it weren't for Bobby, I probably would have. See, he talked me into staying and doing my research, so me and him, we sat in front of his books and dug up everything we could on Silent Hill. I knew I had to wait, I mean I had no intention of bringing Billy with me. You have to believe me on that. I didn't want to put him into any kind of danger, so I was going to wait until he left for school before setting out."

Dean nodded and looked over at Sam, his eyes moving from side to side as he glanced through the journal. He knew Sam was listening.

"He found my research and refused to let me leave without him. What was I supposed to do? She was his mother, too. He called his college, told them of a death in the family. They gave him a two week deferment and even though Bobby begged us to wait a few more days so he could go with us, we got in the car and drove east.

"We didn't talk much on the way to Ashfield, I filled him in on what I learned about the town and what I suspected happened to our mother, but that was it. When we got close to Ashfield, I don't know, he started acting odd."

"Odd, how?" asked Dean.

"_When are we going to be there?" Billy asks from the passenger seat. This is the third nap he's had in the past five hours and after every one, his mood has grown blacker. He fiddles with the buttons on the radio and until static screeches through the speakers. _

"_Hey. You wanna put your seatbelt back on?"_

"_I will in a minute," Billy says, pushing the seek button on the radio again._

_Anne closes her eyes briefly. "How about right now, Bill?"_

"_Fine. Look, see here? Belt, going across lap. Hear the click? Now I'm buckled up for safety. Happy now? How much longer do I have to sit in this stupid truck?"_

_Anne takes her eyes off the road and looks at her brother, his face awash in the blue glow of the dashboard clock. It's close to two am. "I don't know, Bill. Another hour or two, maybe?"_

_He sighs beside her, and she can see him from the corner of her eye, running his hand through his dark hair. "Jesus, Anne, do you think you can drive any slower?"_

_Anne takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment and then lets it out slowly. Billy's hand is reaching for the radio knob again and instinctively, she slaps it away. "Leave it alone, Bill."_

"_Or what, Anne?" He asks. "Or what?"_

"_Knock it off," Anne says and punches the radio knob with her index finger, the static cutting off. Silence fills the car, but it is anything but quiet. Billy's tapping his fingers against his jeans with one hand and tapping his knuckles against the window with the other._

_Anne tries to concentrate on the winding road ahead of her. Fog drifts in to lie across the road ahead. Perfect. Just freaking perfect. If Billy didn't stop with that freaking tapping, she's going to smack him upside the head. "What is wrong with you?"_

"_There's nothing wrong with me," Bill snaps back as he punches his knuckles against the window. "I just want to fucking get there, Anne."_

"_And I don't?" Anne raises her voice. "You have a driver's license too, you know. You're more then welcome to take over the driving if you're not happy with the way I'm doing it."_

"_Shut up," he says, and Anne's so surprised, she quiet for a moment. Billy has never in her life told her to shut up before. Who the hell is this person sitting beside her pretending to be her brother?_

_She takes her eyes off the road again and stares at him. His eyes are tightly closed and his hands are clenched in fists against his knees. "Billy! What did you say to me?"_

_Billy's eyes fly open as she glances over at him again. "Slow down, Anne! Slow down! You're going to get us killed!"_

_Anne's eyes flash back to the road. It's completely obscured in fog now. "What? Holy shit!" On reflex, her foot presses down on the accelerator instead of the brake. _

_There's something in the road ahead. A person in the middle of the road. "Oh, fuck!"_

"_Anne!" Billy yells. He lurches across the cab of the SUV and grabs the steering wheel and twists it towards him. The fog lifts momentarily and the headlights illuminate a telephone pole directly in front of them. _

_She twists the wheel the other way and in a heartbeat, the world is spinning out of control as sound and glass and pain fill Anne's head and then everything goes dark._

_Gray light fills the car when Anne comes too. She's hanging upside down, only her seat belt keeping her anchored to the seat. Hours must have passed. Her head hurts, her neck hurts, and her stomach hurts. But it's forgotten when she glances over at the passenger side._

_Billy's gone. /i _

"You went looking for him?"

"Of course I did. At first I was afraid he had been thrown from the wreck. I was so afraid I was going to find Billy lying broken by the side of the road, but he was no where to be found. I started walking. I walked down the center of the road through the fog until I came to a town. We crashed right outside of Silent Hill. I thought it was pretty fucking ironic at the time. That town," Anne shuddered. "That town is horrible. Everything about it is wrong. It's shrouded in a smoky haze, it constantly rains ash and it's deserted. At least, I thought it was deserted."

"What do you mean?"

"Things live there. I didn't see any people," she rested her chin on her knees. "I saw monsters."

"Monsters?" Dean asked.

Anne nodded. "I thought I had finally found Billy, I thought it was him. It had to be him. Who else could it have been?"

"It wasn't?" Sam asked from above her.

Anne shook her head as a tear escapes her eyes. "I don't know. I saw him for a moment– it was him, his hair, his jacket, the way he stands. He didn't look at me, didn't turn when I called him. And then he ran down this alley and I followed him, calling his name. He didn't move. Then birds started shrieking and this shrill, deafening siren went off. Everything plunged into darkness. And that's when t_hey /i _came."

"Who?"

"The monsters. All the paint fell away from the walls, and I swear, it looked like they started dripping blood. I couldn't see anything at first, it was so dark. Then there was this noise, this cricking, crackling noise. I ran and hid." She bent her head so her cheek rested on the top of her knees.

"I was such a freaking coward. I peeked out from behind a dumpster and something was coming and I knew it was coming for me. And the bugs, there were bugs everywhere," Anne shuddered. "They were as large as my hands and feet. I had to bite my hand keep from screaming. But…but the bugs weren't the worst. The worst was this sound…this sound of metal grinding and heavy footsteps coming towards me. I was so scared.

"I mean, I know there are things out there. I know all about ghosts and demons and evil creatures, but this, I'd never seen anything like this before. It wasn't human, and it wasn't a demon. A nightmare, that's what it was.

"It was ten feet tall and naked from the waist up. It dragged a huge sword. Its head was covered with this thing, this triangle shaped thing. I don't even know how to explain it," Anne's hands fluttered up as her voice broke. She stared at the carpet in front of her, her eyes huge and unfocused. "The head piece, it looked like it was made of steel."

Dean moved closer to her, instinctively offering comfort and she leaned into him.

"I should have done more. I should have made sure it wasn't Billy before," her breath caught in her throat. "Before I screamed his name. I didn't know! I was so scared and I thought it was my brother! I was trying to warn him and but instead that thing found him, that thing picked up him up and tore off his head with his bare hands."

"Jesus Christ," Dean whispered as he put his arm around her shoulders. She gulped hard and spoke into his shirt.

"I didn't know what to do," she said, her voice hushed. "That thing threw the bloody head at me. It hit the dumpster and I ran. I ran blindly, I didn't know where I was going and I couldn't see. I must have tripped or ran into something, because I can't remember anything after that until I was standing by a store front and it wasn't dark anymore. I recognized it – the store front - from the stories my mother used to tell of her parents. Her father owned a department store in Silent Hill and they lived above it. The door to the apartment was open – it looked as if it had been broken into. So I went in. That's where I found the diary."

"How did you get back out of the town?" Sam asked. He leaned forward in his chair, the diary set to one side.

Anne pulled away from Dean's arm and stood. She walked to the shattered window and stared at the white fog hiding the world outside "I remember walking back out the way I came. The way I thought was towards my car. I remember the siren going off in the distance, and the darkness coming again. After that," she turned and looked at the brothers, "I can't remember anything until the rain woke me up. I was soaking wet, I must have lain there all night. But I couldn't move until the rain stopped.

"I ran back into town, but it was different. It wasn't like it had been before. There was no ash, no fog, there was no smell of smoke. I could see the lake at the end of the main street, the sun dappling on the surface like diamonds. I couldn't see that before. The police found me when I was on my way back to the car."

"Listen, Anne. That thing, whatever it was that monster picked up, it wasn't your brother, okay?" Dean said, standing.

"How can you be so sure?"

"I'm not," Dean looked at Sam before looking back down at her. "But I understand why you need to know."

She shook her head and paced back and forth in front of the window, her hands tucked into her front jean pockets. "I hope you both believe I never wanted to get you involved with this. I thought I had enough time to get you into the car and out of this room before this happened," she waved a hand towards the chains on the doors and windows.

"How did you know this was going to happen?" Sam asked.

"That?" Anne asked, pointing at the chains. "I had no idea those chains were going to lock us in here.

"While I was in the bathroom, I remembered what happened when I was a child, after my mother was murdered. There was a small hole like that one on the blood-covered wall and it closed as I watched it. And I thought…I thought maybe this was how they came for her, maybe if it closed up before my eyes it had been larger before. I mean, maybe it had been a tunnel, a portal whatever you want to call it. So I picked a scab and wiped my bloody finger against the wall. A few moments later, a small hole appeared," she shrugged her shoulders and held up her hands. "I needed more blood to make a bigger hole."

"Damn it, Anne, you should have told us. You could have killed yourself slitting your wrists."

Anne smiled sadly. "It doesn't matter how I die. I'm already damned."

"It feels so weird to be here, talking so calmly about this with you with all this craziness going on." Anne said.

"I know right," Sam said as he looked back down at the black journal in his hands and then over Anne's head at the chains on the door behind her. "No way out except for a large tunnel in the bathroom. You know, I went to quite a few parties in my first two years at Stanford that I wished had an escape hatch in the bathroom, but that's not exactly what I had in mind." He nodded his head towards the bathroom and grinned at her.

Despite how scared she was, she smiled back at him and looked over at Dean sitting on the edge of the bed.

"So tell me this again," Sam said as he sat down across from her at the table. "Did the people of this Silent Hill town really burn that little girl?"

Anne nodded. "One of the first things Bobby did for us when we came to live with him was put together a family tree for me and Billy. He didn't show it to me until after I received the letter. That stupid freaking letter. There is no Abigail Quincy and I think Bobby knew. One of the last things he said to me before we left was I was chasing a ghost.

"The Gillespies were descendents of the first witch burned, the Arch Witch Jenifer Carol. My mother was a Gillespie and Alessa was my mother's cousin. Have you gotten to the part in my mother's journal, about how quiet Alessa was as a baby? How she never cried?"

"Yeah, the mother thought because of the birth, it was some kind of a sign there was something wrong with the baby, right? Possible brain trauma or something?"

"From what I was able to pick up from reading the journal, Alessa's father was never named and Dahlia considered her a virgin birth."

"Fuck," Sam said.

"Yeah. And then, it seemed as Alessa grew she began to show some characteristics of Jenifer. Telekinesis, reading people's thoughts. Other things. She was teased by her classmates and one afternoon, maybe Alessa had had enough. Alessa was the only one with the girl when she died. The Order believed Alessa was possessed. From what my mother wrote, the Order worshipped an archaic God. A God they believed resided inside of Alessa."

"When did you have time to read all of this?" Dean asked.

Anne lifted her eyes to Dean's. "Do you really think I was in a mad rush to go back out on the streets of Silent Hill? I sat on the floor of the apartment and read it."

"Where did you find it?"

"Christ, Dean. I was in the apartment and something crashed in the building below me. I hid under the bed. I was scared. I thought I had just seen my brother murdered by a ten foot giant. I thought maybe I'd be safe there. The book was there. Any more questions?"

Dean shook his head.

"Do you think your mother and grandmother knew what this Dahlia had planned?" Sam asked.

Anne was quiet for almost a full minute before she answered. "I don't know. It's suspect, right? Either way my mother and grandmother were members of a cult. And my mother left town the night of Alessa's burning. Half the town burned that night. I just don't know, Sam," she sighed and then gave a resigned shrug.

"This Order that you keep referring to, it's the_ they /i _ and _them /i _ you were talking about earlier, right? You think it was the Order that came for your mother?"

Anne nodded. "I think it was them. My grandmother died the night of the burning and my mother never spoke of it to me. But I'd like to believe my mother was the one who notified the police about what the Order was up to. I don't know whatever happened to the surviving members, but the official cause of the fire was never released to the public, only that Alessa was badly burned in the blaze."

"How do you know this is going to lead us to Silent Hill?" Dean asked as he ran his flash light over the tunnel walls.

"I don't," Anne said as she shouldered her bag. "Call it a another hunch."

"I hate tunnels," Dean bitched. "I hate tunnels that have viscous material for walls. Check it out, Sam."

"So wait a minute, Anne. The journal talks about two different Sects of this cult," Sam said as he handed Anne an extra handgun.

"Um, yeah, I remember reading something like that."

Sam shook his head. "Don't Anne. Don't play dumb now. You knew there were two different Sects, didn't you?"

Anne looked up at Sam. "So what? Does it really matter now?"

"Yeah, it probably does matter," Dean said. "What were the names of the two Sects, Sam?"

"The Sect of the Holy Mother and the Sect of the Holy Woman. The Holy Woman Sect is the cult Dahlia Gillespie belonged to. The one that burned the little girl."

"Which one did your mother belong to?" Dean asked.

Anne stared at Dean and swallowed hard. She shook her head and turned her back on the two of them, her silence all the answer they needed.

"Son of a bitch," Dean said. "Your mother belonged to that cult? The cult that murdered a little girl?

Anne turned and stared at Dean. "I don't know, Dean. I wasn't there, in case you forgot."

"Yeah, but your mother was, wasn't she? It was her eyewitness account of Alessa's burning you found. Wasn't it?"

Anne threw up her hands. "You're right, Dean! You're absolutely right! My mother murdered that little girl, I'm sorry she wasn't as perfect as Saint Mary! But you know what? And correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall my mother paid for her involvement, didn't she? Do you think she deserved it? Do you think it was an eye for an eye?" She took the handgun Sam gave her and tucked into the back of her pants. "Can you judge her without knowing everything that happened? Do you think she deserved to be murdered while her children hid in a closet, listening to every scream, every sound her body made when it struck the floor?"

"Anne, Anne, come on, calm down," Sam said, taking her arm and pulling her away from Dean. "He didn't mean it that way, look, you just surprised us, you know?"

Anne stared at Dean. "Of course that's what he meant. It's always black and white with you, isn't it?"

Dean watched her, his jaw clenching as he bent to pick up his gun. He opened his mouth as if he were going to say something and then shut it again, instead smiling at her. "You know what? You're right. It is always black and white with me. Do you know how to use that handgun Sam gave you?"

"Of course," Anne said. "Bobby's a good teacher."

"Fine," Dean said and shoved the handgun in his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket. He picked up a third one and mirrored Anne, tucking it into the back of his pants.

Anne turned away from him. "Can we please just go find my brother?"

"That tunnel is nasty," Sam remarked, tilting his head to glance inside the tunnel and changing the subject. "It could be worse, though."

"How's that?" Dean took the flashlight from his brother. "How can anything possibly be worse than what's in there?"

"We could be flying," Sam said.

"Shut up about the flying thing," Dean snapped. "Right now, I almost wish I were in an airplane. Heading somewhere warm. Tahiti would be nice."

"Sorry to ruin your vacation plans," Anne snipped at him.

"Whatever," Dean said and turned back to the wall.

"I'll go firs…"

"No, you won't," Dean said. "I'm going first. Then you and Sammy'll bring up the rear."

_Not the time to complain, not the time to complain /i _, she thought to herself as Sam handed her a hand gun and a flashlight.

"Is he always like this?" she whispered.

"Naw," Sam said in her ear. "He's just pissed because he didn't learn about this Silent Hill place first."

"Oh, please. I'm not pissed, I'm excited. See this," he pointed to the wide phony grin on his face. "This is my excited face. Can't wait to find the nasty bugs and the disappearing walls," Dean said as he pushed past her. He stepped over the lip of the tunnel and plunged in.

Sam gave her a sympathetic smile and waved her into the tunnel.

"Let's go, children." Dean called from inside the hole. "If I'm having fun, everyone's having fun."

They traveled the first hundred feet or so hunched over, ceiling hanging low, but soon the roof of the tunnel opened up for Sam to stand up straight. "God, it stinks in here," he said.

Anne nodded her head. Rotten meat and stagnant water and something else, something she couldn't yet identify. Their feet squelched with every step they took and something was leaking into her boots.

They walked in silence for a little while and Anne shivered violently as a cold wind blew down the tunnel. Sam took Anne's arm, saving her from falling as she slipped on a wet spot on the tunnel floor. "I don't even want to think about what that was."

Dean paused ahead of them and waited for them to catch up. "Coming, kids?"

"Disgusting," Sam said.

"I know," Anne said and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

"Hey, in those news clippings you found, it says Alessa survived the fire, right?"

"Barely survived, but yeah. I don't know what happened to her after that night. Obviously, the world didn't end and I think we'd know if God roams the earth, right? Even though we're heading for a ghost town where monsters are real."

Dean started walking again, the beam of his flashlight illuminating the glistening walls in streaks of quick moving light. "There's something up ahead," he said, pulling the shotgun down off his shoulder. Sam pulled Anne further behind him, putting his own gun up.

Dean put his hand up and they stopped, their flashlights pointing down towards the oozing floor. "It's the end of the tunnel," he said as he stepped over another lip. He did a quick sweep of the room with his light and gun and then turned back and took Anne's hand. She tripped on the lip and would have fallen, but Dean grabbed her tightly as she stumbled into him. Her body tightened at his touch, the shiver running up her spine having nothing to do with the coldness of the room.

Then just as suddenly, he pushed her away and rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. "Let's go," Dean said once Sam emerged from the tunnel.

"Where are we?" Sam asked.

Anne ran her flashlight over the peeling paint on the walls. Pictures of the sun, of tropical places adorn the frames scattered along the floor. "I think this must have been the bus station," she says, turning in a slight circle.

"What about this darkness you were talking about? How often does that happen?" Sam asked as they walked around the rows of abandoned chairs.

She shook her head. "I don't know. The birds went crazy right before, it seemed to be some kind of a warning it was going to begin."

"How about we get outside," Dean said. "This place is giving me the creeps." He pushed the door open, looked up and down the street.

Anne looked at Sam, shook her head. "He hasn't seen anything, yet."

She was right. They stepped out of the pale gray light of the bus station into the pale gray light of the street. Ash fell like snow all around them, covering the silent cars and sidewalks with a thin film of grey. The drifting ash mimicked the fog on the roadways leading into town – Anne could see Sam and Dean clearly, but when she looked down the street, the haze deepened. The second car parked along the curb was blurred, the fourth indistinct. The bricks of the building beside them were sharp and clear, but at the end of the block, the next building was impossible to distinguish from the mist. The buildings beyond the intersection faded into obscurity. The silence was absolute except for the sound of the door slamming behind them. It echoed throughout against the street fronts, gathering speed and density as it raced away from them.

Both Anne and Sam jumped and spun around to face Dean, who held up both of his hands, the shotgun raised high above his head and apologized. Somewhere off in the distance, something clanked against metal.

"Look," Dean said, gesturing at the desolation before him. "We stick together. None of this Scooby-Doo crap of splitting up, understand? We might not be in Kansas anymore, but I ain't going to see the wizard alone, all right, Anne?"

"Why are you singling me out?"

"Because if you suddenly hear your brother calling for you or if you see him out of the corner of your eye, I want you to understand it's not on for you to go tearing off looking for him. If you see something, or hear something, you tell us and we'll all go."

"I'm not a child, Dean. And I'm not your brother. You can't just order me around because you feel like it."

"Listen cookie," Dean said, leaning into her menacingly. "You got us into this mess, and you better as hell not leave us here to clean up after you. If either one of us gets killed because of something stupid you do, I'm going to haunt you for the rest of your life. Understand?"

"How many more times do I have to apologize to you? You weren't supposed to be here. I understand that and I'm sorry you're here. Stop taking your anger about it out on me!" She poked at his chest with her finger. "You wanna be pissed at anyone, be pissed at Bobby. He's the one who called you in the first place. Not me."

Dean threw his hands up in exasperation. "I'm not angry with you, Anne. I'll admit you're not at the top of my most favorite people list right now, but I just want us to find Billy and get out of this place alive. We can deal with all the other bullshit afterwards. Okay?"

Anne looked up at him and then at Sam. "Okay."

All three of them jumped as something else crashed "That was closer than the last one," Sam said.

Dean nodded. "Let's go."

They moved down the center of the street, guns at the ready. The silence of the town was deafening and oppressive. "Hey, Sammy," Dean asked, eyes and shot gun barrel tracking over the windows on the right side of the street. "Do you feel them?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "All around. I can't get a vibe on where it's coming from."

"What?" Anne asked.

Dean glanced back. Nothing was moving. There was no breeze, no wind. The trees stood silent and dead against the gray sky. "We're being watched."

"By people?" Anne asked, bringing the gun up a bit closer to her chest.

Sam glanced around the deserted streets. "I don't know."

"Something stinks," Anne said as she raised the collar of her shirt over her mouth and nose.

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. "Brimstone," Dean said.

"And sulfur," Sam added.

"And burnt flesh," Anne said, gagging a bit.

All three of them shared a disgusted look.

Suddenly, something darted into the street from behind an abandoned car in front of them. The features on the figure were indistinct, body lines blurred by the blinding fog. Sam and Dean raised their guns, backing away from the coming threat, both squinting in their attempts to make out what it was. The fog around it swirled and dissipated as it came closer. It stood crooked, knees bent inwards, hands and arms bound against its body by gray skin. The head shook violently from side to side, and it was coming at them, faster than Anne had ever seen anything move.

"Where the fuck's the face?" Dean asks.

"Shoot it!" Anne cried as she raised her gun and fired. She missed, the round punching into one of the cars lining the street.

Both of the brothers took aim and shot at the thing, but not before a hole in the chest opened up and black liquid shot out in an arc in front of them. "What the fuck is that?" Sam yelled as the liquid hit the ground and started to smoke.

"Don't care," Dean yelled back. "Bring it down!" He jacked another round, fired again.

Anne held her arm straight and sighted down the pistol again. She shot at the creature too, the thunder of the guns muted against the fog. Finally, it fell. Somewhere up ahead, a siren began to wail.

"I think the town knows we're here," she said as she brought the smoking gun down. "Come on," she yelled at the brothers over the noise. "We've got to get off of the street."

"And go where?" Dean shouted.

"Anywhere but here! There has to be more of them! Do you want to wait for them to show up?"

"Christ, _no /i ._" Dean said as they ran towards the cross street in front of them. The darkness was swallowing the town whole, and he grabbed Anne's arm and pulled her into an alley as it settled over them.

"I can't see a fucking thing," Sam muttered beside her as he reloaded his gun.

Dean patted his jacket pockets, trying to control his breathing. "What the fuck was that thing?"

Sam handed Anne a new clip as she released the empty one. "Fuck if I know," she said, slamming the clip home in the butt of the pistol. "But if we see anymore, we'll know to steer clear. Did you see what that black crap did to the street?"

All around them, the walls whispered, squished and moaned. "Get away from the wall," Dean said, grabbing his brother by the arm and pulling him away. The building behind them was disintegrating, the concrete walls giving way to bleeding, puss-filled rot. The siren stopped. The corruption spread along the walls of the building in front of them until the bricks are completely gone and a fence stands in its place. The light of day is completely gone and darkness surrounds them. The alley is illuminated faintly by the glow of their flashlights.

"God, this is like that room of rotting corpses we found in the lair of that _Gegbo /i _ in Louisiana, huh, Sam?" Dean said, covering his nose with his forearm. "No chance you have any Vicks vapor rub in that backpack of yours, is there, Anne?"

Anne eyes were tearing as she breathed shallowly through her mouth. "No."

"How long?" Sam asked. "How long is it going to stay like this?"

"I don't know. A few minutes, a half hour, look, I don't know."

"Well, I don't think we can stay here," Dean said, swinging his flashlight along the walls and the chain-link fence across from them. He moved the beam above, illuminating a mutilated body hanging from the fence. "Jesus Christ," he hissed, moving the beam away.

"What!" Anne cried. "What was it?"

"Nothing you need to see."

Anne grabbed his arm. "I do need to see, Dean. I have to know, I have to make sure it isn't Billy."

"It's not," he said as he pulled his arm from her grasp. "Here," he said as he pointed the flashlight back at the body. "That look like Billy up there to you?"

Anne stared upwards, her eyes moving rapidly over the body. "No," she said as she looked away. "That's not Billy. It's too decomposed."

A sound from behind made the three of them swing around. Sam and Dean swung their flashlights down the alley, and lit a dark figure for a split second before it ran away. "What the hell was that?" Sam yelled as Anne ran towards it, turning a corner. Dean and Sam followed close behind.

"Billy," Anne screamed. "Stop, Billy, please!"

Sam snatched her by the arm. "Anne, hush."

"Let go, that was Billy!"

Dean had her by the other arm now. "Maybe it was, but we talked about this – no running off, and no screaming and bring the fuglies down on top of us!"

He let go of her arm, stepped back. "Now. Look around. You recognize any of this?"

They stood at the mouth of another long alley. "This is it," Anne said. "This is where I was before. I remember that thing over there," she pointed towards a hulk of trash piled behind the fence.

She crouched along the wall, keeping as close to it as she could without touching it, pointing her flashlight into every nook she saw. "Where's the dumpster. Do you see anything?"

Things began to skitter in the darkness. Quiet for a moment, the three of them listened to the whispers surrounding them. Anne slowly stood. The brothers moved close together, their bodies triangled against the threat coming. Hundreds of voices maliciously whispering came from everywhere and no where at once.

Dean swept his flashlight from side to side, the light playing across blood oozing from the walls, creeping towards their feet. And then, at the end of the alley, a pair eyes glowed red in the darkness. They blinked and disappeared.

A heartbeat later, hundreds and hundred of red eyes opened all at once.

A short, strangled cry escaped Anne before she could stifle it. The eyes were coming closer.

Dean lit them with his flashlight, and almost dropped. "Son of a bitch!" Mutant children with outstretched hands swarmed towards them, their faces melted, swollen bellies obscenely glistening in the glow of the flashlights.

"Holy fuck," Sam whispered. "They're just kids."

Anne cocked her gun and fired at the one in front of her. As if it were a signal, the others began to wail and rushed towards them. She fired wildly, screaming as the mutant bodies burned, the ashes flying up towards the sky as the alley began to lighten.

Ash fell on her upturned face, the gray fog settling down on top of them, blinding them once again. Anne wiped her face convulsively, and shuddered. The concrete buildings faded into view. Sam stood beside her, and turned slowly around. "That was real, right?" he asked. Everything they saw during the darkness was gone.

She nodded, turning around, looking for Dean. He stood a few feet away, staring at the brick wall. He touched it with his hand, as if seeking proof of its reality. "I hate this fucking town," he said as he turned to look at his brother and Anne.

"Did you see anything of Billy? Anything at all? Sam asked.

Anne shook her head, her throat dry. "That's a good thing though, right?" She tucked the gun under her arm and put her head in her hands. "John was right, this place is cursed."

"Dad knew about this place?" Sam asked.

"I don't know, Sam. Why don't we ask the little ray of sunshine next to you."

Anne stiffened. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You told Dad about your family history, Anne? Maybe you guys talked about it after you fucked?"

Anne flinched like Dean slapped her.

"Dean!" Sam said, raising his voice. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Ask her," Dean said as he stared hard at Anne.

"I didn't," Anne said, shaking her head. "I…Your father and I never, we never... Why do you think..." she stopped and placed a shaking hand to her forehead. "You weren't asleep before. You heard me use your phone to call him."

"No, but imagine my surprise when I looked at my dialed calls and there he was. I didn't call. Sam sure as hell didn't. So why'd you call him, Anne?"

"I called John because he's the only one who can pull you two out of here after we find Billy. He's your only link to the real world."

"Our link? Don't you mean yours? You have some kind of special connection to our old man? What the hell is that all about?"

Anne laughed, but it was harsh. She stared at the sky and shook her head. "He's not my link, he's yours, you and Sam. Me? He hardly knows I exist. I wanted him to, back when I was eighteen and he was…I don't know how to explain it. He was everything the other boys in town weren't. But he was never anything more than a gentleman. I tried once to make it more, yeah, and then he knew how I felt, but he just let me know in no uncertain terms my feelings were never going to be reciprocated. He still loves your mother. And yes, if you want to know the truth, I was jealous of a ghost for a really long time."

"That's what you were talking about that night, huh? You couldn't become obsessed with me because you were already obsessed with my dad. A simple no would have worked. Nice."

"I did say no!" She cried in frustration. "You came on to me, remember? You know, this is bullshit, Dean. This right now, doing this here is bullshit. I called your father so he can save your ass. That's it."

"Anne," Sam said, moving closer to her. "We'll get out. All of us. If Dad helps, that's great but if not, we'll figure it out on our own."

"No, you won't. You don't get it do you? I called your father because I realized…"

"Realized what?" Dean asked.

"That Billy and I are never leaving Silent Hill."

Dean strode up to her and grabbed both of her upper arms. "Will you stop saying that?" He shook her. "My father isn't going to come. He won't."

"He has to," Anne said. "Because I can't do it again. I don't know how I got out the last time. I don't know why Alessa let me leave. Maybe because I felt half-insane and it wasn't fun playing with a crazy person. I don't know! I don't have anything tying me to the real world anymore. But you two do. You have your father and he has you and you have your hunt. It's not over yet for the two of you. Your story hasn't ended yet."

"This is no damn story, this is our lives, girl!"

"It is a story! It's mine! Billy and me, it's here. Our history. We're the only living survivors left of Alessa Gillespie. Do you think she'll let us leave now that she has us both again?"

"She will if I have anything to say about it," Dean said as he released Anne. "Dad or no Dad, we all go home from here."

"Dean?" Sam called. "I hate to break up our little share-therapy session here, but more of those skin straight-jacket freaks are heading our way."

Dean looked up and over Anne's head. "Jesus fuck. We need to keep moving. Let's just find your brother."

They trotted down the alley and came out on a cross street not far from the center of town. "God," Anne panted as they stopped to catch their breaths. "What was the name of that street again?"

"Midwich."

"Of course," she said, turning around and staring up at the sky. "The school isn't far. That's where I think Billy would go if he was still alive."

They moved silently through the fog, stopping twice to look at the bus maps to check their bearings until they came to the school, an imposing two storied building.

They opened the doors to the school cautiously, Dean and Sam both covering Anne as she walked inside. Dead leaves and discarded papers lined the deserted hallways, and whispering shadows moved along the walls.

"Anne," Sam whispered. "Anne, you keep talking about this Alessa like she's still alive."

She turned to Sam, her face empty. "Can't you feel her all around you? This is Alessa's realm. This is her world. These are her toys. We're just the mice she trapped in the cage."

Their footsteps echoed throughout the empty school. "Billy?" Anne called into the silence.

She stopped by the staircase, listening, as Sam and Dean made their way down the hallway, peeking into open doorways. Overhead, something fell, the boom echoing through the building. "Billy!" she yelled and took off running up the stairs.

"Anne, stop!" Dean shouted as he and Sam pounded up the stairs after her. They stopped at the open landing at the top of the stairs.

Anne was gone.

"_Welcome home, Annie," the voice says, close to her ear. "Should we wait for your friends before we start the party?"_

_Anne shakes her head. "Let them go, Alessa. They have nothing to do with this."_

_The giggle is high pitched and from the mist in front of her, a little girl appears. "But I'm having so much fun with them!"_

"_You can have me!" Anne screams. "I'm here. Take me instead. Just let them and Billy go and you can have me!"_

"_That's not how it's supposed to happen! You can't sacrifice yourself!" The little girl shrieks before she smiles brightly, tilting her head to look up at Anne. "Do you like your pretty white dress? The red ribbon I pulled your hair back with? It looks just like the one my mommy gave me. Before she tied me to a chair and left me to burn!"_

_Alessa's porcelain face is cracking. As the layers begin to peel, more blacken and charred skin appears. Blood flows down her white neck. _

"_Do you think it'll hurt as much if you surrender yourself? I don't! I want you to feel every flame licking against your body while you struggle to survive. I want you to hurt more then me. I want to watch as the fire flicks up your legs, your face! I want to watch while your pretty hair burns!"_

_Alessa Gillespie's clothes are fusing with her skin. Her long dark hair shrivels and shrinks against her head, her lips pulling away from her face. "Your mother was only the beginning. You should have heard the way she screamed before she died. You really don't think I didn't know the mice were hiding behind the walls? It wouldn't have been any fun taking you then."_

"_Where's Billy? Let me see my brother." Anne's legs tremble as she struggles to remain standing. _

"_Ah yes. Your brother. He's over there. Can you pick him out from the others?"_

_Anne shakes her head in denial. "You didn't. Please, Alessa. He didn't do anything to you!"_

"_He was born!"_

_Anne's hands begin to shake as the fog is lifted away from the burning wall. There are bodies there, squirming against the heat, against the fire. "Thank you, Alessa," Anne says, her eyes filling with tears. "I know how to end this now," she whispers. /i _

"Calm down," Sam told Dean as they searched through the abandoned classrooms. "We need to think about this.

"Think about what?" Dean said as he slammed open another door. He kicked over a desk, sending tufts of dust in the air like smoke. "She's gone."

Sam stopped Dean by putting a hand on his arm. "I think I know where she went."

"Where?"

"Well, she said Alessa Gillespie was burned, right? But that she survived the burning?"

"Yeah, so?"

"They would have taken her to the hospital, Dean. If Alessa is what's controlling this madness, she must still be in the hospital, right?"

Dean nodded once. "Let's go kill the bitch."

Neither of them had ever encountered a hunt quite like the one they found in the ruins of the hospital. Walls of bloody gore and shit lined their step. Nightmarish doctors wielding bloody scalpels roamed the halls. Faceless nurses turned and as they passed, their broken bodies moving grotesquely in the hunters' wake.

"Where would she be?" Dean whispered.

Sam clenched his jaw as he ducked beneath the jungle of eviscerated intestines hanging from the ceiling. "In Hell, right? The bowels of the hospital?"

Dean swept his flashlight over the breathing walls until he found a staircase. "The basement."

They crept down the stairs, ignoring every monstrous nightmare that shuffled around them until they came to the end and faced the swinging double doors, they reloaded silently. Now they were in their element.

Hunting.

"_What do you think you're doing?" the little girl cries as Anne moves closer to the wall of fire._

_Anne pretends she doesn't hear her. All the struggling she has done to escape, to run away – it's been a mistake. Her first impulse, the one that had led her to Silent Hill, had been correct. Alessa was right. Anne's come home._

The brothers nodded at each other once before they slammed their shoulders into the door. They rushed through the doorway, weapons at the ready, sighting on the first thing that moved.

Anne stood in the center of the empty room. Her childish white dress glowed and her dark hair was tied away from her face with a scarlet ribbon.

"Anne?" Dean shouted as she started to walk towards the back wall. It burst into flames, the blaze licking hungrily up the wall. "Anne, no!" he yelled as he ran towards her. She looked back at him, and he froze in mid step. "Annie, please. Please don't do this."

"I have to," she whispered as she took another step towards the fire. "It's the only way." Anne looked over her shoulder and smiled sadly. "Tell Bobby thank you. For everything. Tell him I said…" she paused and looked back at the burning wall. "Tell him she would have come after him next, just for loving us and giving us shelter. I think...I hope he'll understand."

"Annie, sweetheart. Please come to me and Sam. This isn't a delusion, it's not a dream. That's real fire in front of you. You're going to die if you go…"

And then someone, something in the fire reached out to her. Dean could see features in the flames, recognized Billy. There was someone else beside him, reaching for Anne as well. She smiled faintly, turning back to the wall. Anne took their hands. She gazes up at the ceiling, her face at peace as the flames lick up her arms, lighting her clothes, her hair.

"No!" Dean screamed and Sam was pulling him back with a death grip on his arm as Anne became engulfed in the flames. She didn't scream, but something did. He and Sam ducked their heads away from the furnace blast. The flames flashed out, licked over a decaying hospital bed tucked in the corner of the room. As Anne and her family burned, so did the bed. The screams climb higher and higher as the fire reached the ceiling and exploded along the rotting plaster.

"We have to get out of here," Sam yelled into his brother's ear. "The whole place is going up."

Dean nodded once and let his brother lead him back up the stairs. The fire following them, biting at their heels, hot on the back of their necks. The monsters and the creepers on the walls of the hospital caught fire and screamed in pain.

They reached the main floor and turned down the final hallway, racing towards the exit doors as the hospital exploded around them.

"_Dean. Dean!"_

_There's a voice pulling at him, but he doesn't want to go. It's warm here and Anne isn't far. She needs him, even if she always pretended otherwise. He can see her just ahead, teasing him, never letting him get too close. "Go, Dean," she finally whispers and he opens his eyes against the bright sunlight._

He sat up too fast, and the blood rushing in his head brought him back down again.

"Thank God," said the voice beside him.

Someone lifted his head, touched a canteen to his lips. Dean drank deeply, sputtering as he said, "Sam."

"I'm here," his brother said from the other side of him.

Dean opened his eyes again, and blinked rapidly until he could see. He ached all over, beat up and bruised, but nothing felt broken. All around him, the town smoldered and burned. Black smoke drifted high above them, blocking out the blue of the sky.

The face of the man kneeling beside Dean surprised him and brought him up onto his elbows. Son of a bitch! She had been right.

"Dad?"

His father put a hand on his shoulder and looked up at the devastation surrounding him. "We need to get out of here before the fire trucks and police arrive. Did you boys set this fire?"

"No, sir." Sam answered, his face covered in black soot. "But we know who did." He gave Dean a hand and pulled him to his feet.

Dean stared around him, his eyes finally coming to rest on the smoking ruin of the hospital. "They're in there."

"Who?" John Winchester asked, turning to look at the hospital. "Annie? Anne and Billy are dead?"

"She saved our lives, Dad." Sam said, voice like sandpaper.

"Did you try and save them?"

Dean turned to his father and gave him an incredulous look.

"Of course we did. What do you think we'd been trying to do since we Bobby called us?" Sam asked.

Dean rubbed his face with an ash-stained hand. "She didn't want to be saved," he coughed and ran an ash-stained hand over his face. "She knew from the beginning she was never leaving Silent Hill. Annie knew the only way to end the cycle of murder begun in this town thirty years ago was to sacrifice herself. Stupid girl," Dean looked back once before limping away from the burning buildings. "She's dead and she's with her family. Let her have her peace."

John Winchester sighed once and said a prayer for the girl he once knew before turning to follow his boys.

-fin-


End file.
